


Different

by leiascully



Category: Leverage
Genre: Foster Care, Happy Ending, Identity Issues, Internalized Homophobia, Multi, Pre-OT3, Racial Identity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:55:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25856233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: Alec was different.
Relationships: Alec Hardison/Parker, Alec Hardison/Parker/Eliot Spencer
Comments: 31
Kudos: 170





	Different

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: post-"The Low Low Price Job" in the reasonable universe in which that episode precedes "The Rundown Job"  
> A/N: It was Hardison's turn.

Alec was different.

i. He was darker than most of the other kids. They had their own weird little hierarchies in the group home and his skin wasn't all of it, but it was part of the reason why he never got to go to a home with a family of his own. He knew that. He and the other Black and brown kids had held up their arms next to each other a few times, a nice little color wheel, and Alec was always close to or the darkest. That meant police officers saw him first of anybody when they all went to the park, and that a lot of nice white foster families' eyes skidded right over him like he was a shadow. Everybody looked at the blue-eyed blonds, and the one little redheaded boy who came through, still young enough to suck his thumb, and then the light-skinned little kids with the hair that almost smoothed out into pigtails or bangs. 

Alec did his best. Not even his Big Bird shirt made him stand out when the families came, and it was the brightest thing he had. He tried anyway: smiled big, said please and thank you, held his head up high and made polite eye contact. He learned fast how to read people, catching the little flickers of interest that were almost always for other kids, checking the slant of potential parents' bodies as they angled away from him. He learned fast how to hide his disappointment, too. That didn't make him any more wanted. He smiled through it, watched a lot of his friends leave him. A few of them came back, but most of them didn't. It was just Alec, in the corner, with his books and the beat up old cd player he'd found at the thrift store and fussed with until it played without skipping.

Somebody did take him in, for a little while: a sweet enough lady who made him go door to door in a little suit giving out copies of _The Watchtower_ and spreading the word. It was the nicest outfit he'd ever had. But then she got sick, or sick of him, or something, and back to the home he went. He kept the bow tie tucked away in his backpack. It was proof that somebody had wanted him, once, even if it wasn't forever, and maybe it would make him look like a good choice. The carers at the home kept telling him his time would come. But he'd had a home before, a few times, when he was almost too little to remember, and none of it had been for good. Maybe he wasn't good enough. 

He kept standing tall in the shadows, watching families pass him by. He kept trying to be better. He'd outgrown the Big Bird shirt, in more ways than one. He had nothing bright left. 

Nobody really noticed him, not until Nana. But Nana saw him real quick, saw right through him. 

"Good afternoon, ma'am," he said as she approached. "I'm Alec." 

"Yes, you are," she said, and looked him over. "I've been looking forward to meeting you, Alec."

"That's nice of you to say, ma'am," he said as politely as he could, and she laughed from her belly.

"Alec, would you like to come home with me?" she asked.

He didn't have to think about that too hard at all. "Yes, ma'am."

Nana was dark too: skin, hair, and eyes a lot like his. She'd understand. He knew that without even asking. And she'd teach him, not how to do something about it, but how to do something with it. How to make himself seen when he needed to be, smooth when he didn't want the attention. 

Nana was different.

ii. He was smarter than all the other kids. Read faster, thought faster, and the only thing that saved him from the bullies in his elementary years was that he ran faster too. He only had his glasses broken once before he learned better. His older siblings walked him home for a few weeks. Nana had a steady stream of fosters, he learned, and she had for a while now. He wasn't the youngest, wasn't the oldest, and it felt nice. They ate around the table and she put him to bed every night in the room he shared with his older brother Javi. At home, it was okay that he was smart. At school, he learned to keep his hand down, even though he knew the answer. 

"All legs and brains," Nana said when she took them to the park. "You're going to have to do some kind of sport, child, because I can't keep up with you unless you wear yourself out some."

He could be smart, as long as he was strong. He understood what Nana was telling him. People needed other ways to understand him besides his brains. 

"Just for a few years," Nana said. "When you get to high school, if you hate it, you can quit."

Alec picked basketball. He wanted to golf, because that was what rich people did, but they didn't have a golf team at his junior high. Just football and basketball and track and tennis, and basketball kept him inside most of the time, which was better for his allergies. Football was too much getting hit in the head, and he was more height than width anyway. He was going to need his wits about him. Basketball was fine. Basketball was fun most of the time. He wasn't going for the NBA, but it was fun to hear people cheering for him at the games, even when it was Nana. He made friends. People stopped trying to catch him in the courtyard to tell him he was a nerd and started high fiving him in the halls instead. He was still more Steve Urkel than _Fresh Prince_ Will Smith, but it was better than having to duck and dodge. The bullies left him alone, but so did the girls. That kind of evened out. 

Nana had a computer, kind of an old piece of junk. Alec fixed it up, a little at a time, until Nana declared it ran better than it had new. Then he started offering his services to his classmates. It was different now that he was basketball guy Alec Hardison. People took him up on it. He went to their houses to turn off their parents' web filters or reboot their modems, or people brought in their laptops and game systems and what-have-you and he tucked himself away in a corner of the school library and worked on them. The librarian was pretty cool. She kept a set of little screwdrivers around, and all kinds of other tools he had a suspicion she didn't use much even though she was the person people called when their tech crapped out. He did some of those jobs for her, just to save her the trouble, and to say thanks for letting him hang out in the library. Pretty soon the teachers were bringing in their electronics too. 

Computers were easy. Computers meant spending money — scarves and watches and nice sneakers, the kind of extras Nana didn't have the budget for, not between him and the rest of the kids, his rainbow of foster siblings. He quit the basketball team after the season junior year, made time to start teaching himself coding, the real stuff beyond what they'd teach him in class. It was like he was relearning his first language. The computers spoke to him and he talked back. The conversation flowed from his mind into the circuits and wires. He was connected to everyone, everywhere, and he was a god. 

"Alec!" Nana called up the stairs. "Don't forget it's trash night!"

He was a god who still had chores. He clattered around the house collecting trash, dragged the can to the road, stopped to help his little sister with her English homework, and dove back into the world where he made the rules. 

iii. There were other things different about him too. It was a surprise and not a surprise when the captain of the boys' basketball team pushed him against a wall behind the school after practice sophomore year, leaned in, and kissed him. Alec fisted his hands in Andre's letterman jacket and was already kissing him back before he could decide whether to push him away. So there was that decision made, anyway. 

"You gonna be weird about this?" Andre asked.

"I mean, the whole thing's kind of weird, but I don't think so," Alec said. "You gonna be weird?"

"Maybe," Andre said. "It's not like I planned it."

"You kind of did though," Alec pointed out. "I mean, here we are, alone."

"Yeah, but I didn't plan it-plan it," Andre said. "Just saw an opportunity to make the play, you know?"

"I get it," Alec said. 

They stole furtive kisses for months after that, lingering after practice or meeting in the park for a pickup game and finding a tree to hide behind after. And it was weird but it was good and it wasn't like he'd kissed any girls yet anyway, not beyond a few pecks on dares. The braces hadn't really helped that situation. He and Andre both had too much going on to get a lot of time away, and too much family to ever have privacy, so they never really made it past some fumbling with each other's clothes. But Alec wanted to do more, the yearning so strong he was pretty sure that he had more than just a passing or an experimental interest in dudes. He didn't know about Andre. It wasn't like they talked about it. Having a conversation would have been a waste of time, for a couple of reasons.

It was thrilling. It was terrifying. He about had half a dozen minor identity crises about it: what was he doing, why was he doing it, what kind of man would he be, what the hell would happen when Nana found out. What did it mean that he wasn't a skinny white boy or a big bearded white guy, the only kind of men he ever saw kissing men on tv? There were plenty of Black kids at his school, but he didn't know any other boys kissing boys besides him and Andre, or any girls kissing girls besides a few rumors. When he looked for himself in stories, he was hard to find. 

Was he growing up to be the wrong kind of man? Were there Black men out there kissing other men? Nana was amazing, was everything he needed by way of parenting, except maybe for things like this, because however much Nana knew about life, she'd never lived his. She'd raised him to be a good person, but he wasn't sure if that was the same thing as a good man. Besides, he'd seen plenty of good people turn ugly when somebody did something they didn't like. What if Nana kicked him out? He was too old to go back to the group home. Definitely nobody was going to want him now that he wasn't even close to a cute little kid. Was hiding himself the right thing to do? Statistically, there had to be other people like him and Andre, but if they didn't show themselves, maybe they knew better. 

At least the computers didn't care who he kissed. They just did what he told them. 

He'd never had a ton of expectations about his future, growing up, but he had a few now that he'd found his foundation with Nana. They'd vaguely included some kind of relationship with a woman, maybe some kids running around. Every time he started thinking about it, he ran into the same uncertainty. Some parts of his plan were clear, but all the personal stuff was foggy. He still got that warm tingle when a pretty girl grinned at him. But then he saw Andre and that felt warm too. They kept kissing. He didn't know if that changed things about his future. It kept freaking him out every now and then, but that didn't stop the kissing.

One day Nana came to pick him up after practice because his little sister had a piano recital and caught him behind the gym with his hands pressed against Andre's bare abs, Andre's t-shirt rumpled over his wrists, and his tongue in Andre's mouth.

"Alec," she said in an even voice, "don't tell me we're going to be late to Brenda's recital."

He jumped back. "No, ma'am, absolutely we are not. Uh, see you tomorrow, man."

"Yeah, man," Andre said, scuffing his hand over his hair. "See you."

Alec got in the car and behaved perfectly all the way to the recital. He sat through the whole thing, even folded some paper flowers out of the program and handed them to Brenda at the end. He let her ride shotgun on the way home and listened to her chatter about how everything had gone. 

Nana didn't say a thing, didn't even give him the eyeball in the rearview mirror. Alec sat in the kitchen and finished his homework instead of retreating to his room. There was a nervous feeling in the pit of his stomach, half-sick and half-angry. Nana came in and poured herself a cup of coffee after she talked Brenda into going to bed.

"Are you gonna send me back?" Alec asked in a low voice.

"Send you back where?" Nana asked. "School? The law says I have to, just for starters, and I like my job just fine."

"No," Alec said. "To the home. To the system."

"For a little kissing?" Nana snorted. She turned her cup around in her hands. "You're not the first baby I've caught kissing and you won't be the last. I can't think of any reason I'd send you out of my house, but especially not for that. You're my boy and that's final."

"All your boys kiss boys, though?" Alec's voice almost cracked. He scribbled harder on his math homework, grinding the tip of his pencil into the paper.

Nana shrugged. "Baby, what's normal for you is normal. If that's your normal, so be it. All I ask is that the company you keep is good to you."

"We're not really keeping company," Alec mumbled. "It's not serious."

"Okay," Nana said. She sipped her coffee. "I'm sure you'd let me know if it were."

"Yeah," Alec said. He doodled in the margin of his paper. "I think I like girls, too. Just haven't really had a chance yet to figure it out."

Nana patted his hand. "You'll get there, baby. No hurry." She took another sip of coffee. "At least you probably can't get him pregnant."

"Nana!" Alec could feel his face get hot. "It's not like that! We just kiss sometimes."

"All right, baby, all right," Nana said. "Just trying to stay involved in your life. Make sure you stay safe. All that. "

"Very funny," Alec said.

"Honestly, I'm a little bit hurt you thought I'd kick you out," she told him. "Don't you know you're family?"

"Yeah, but plenty of families kick people out." Alec leaned back in his chair and tapped his pencil on his homework. "You hear about it every day."

"Not my family," Nana said firmly. "We chose each other. There is nothing in this world that could make me forsake you."

"Nothing?" Alec asked.

"Absolutely nothing, but don't you go testing me," Nana told him. She pointed at him. "You know better."

Alec relaxed at last. "I do know better."

Nana nodded. "I've met a lot of people, Alec. Some of them weren't what I expected. I'm sure I wasn't what some of them expected. And I've had a lot of children come through this house, one way or the other. Your normal and my normal might not be the same, but that's not my charge. You're the only one who gets to live your life. If this feels right to you, then that's all right with me."

"Thank you," he said. "You know I love you, Nana."

"Of course you do," she told him. "I love you too. Now finish that homework."

"Yes, ma'am," he said. 

"And what did we say, every night I put you to bed?" 

"You chose me, you want me, you love me, this is my home," he said dutifully.

"Still true," she told him, getting up. She patted him on the shoulder. He caught her hand for just a second.

"Me too," he said. 

iv. Alec's career path was different. And by different, he meant less than strictly legal. He didn't bother going to college. They didn't teach the things he needed to know. He thought about telling Nana he'd gotten offered a full ride, but she'd had kids go to college before. She knew how much mail he would have gotten, how much paperwork he would have had to fill out. Instead, he told her that he'd gotten offered a job at a company that worked with technology. He could always fake a degree if he needed one. With honors if he felt like it. Nana was proud of him anyway. Every day he put on his khakis and his button-up shirts and slung his messenger bag over his shoulder. Every day he left the house and went and moved around money that wasn't his, or ideas that weren't his, or information that people didn't want others to know. It was easy. He talked to computers all over the world, and they told him everyone else's secrets, and he sold them. 

Pretty soon, he had enough money that they could remodel the basement. When it wasn't dark and dingy anymore, he moved down there. It freed up his room for a new foster, and he liked it in his bright open studio with its fast internet and its own bathroom. He had his own space for the first time ever. It was kind of soothing to hear Nana and the kids walking around over his head. He was the big brother now, pouring cereal for the littles on his way out the door, keeping an eye on the teen when she came in late from dates. No more braces, no more glasses: he was grown, and proud of himself, and Nana was proud of him too. 

He slid through the back channels and into the servers like he was made of ones and zeroes, like electricity crackled under his skin. On the internet, it didn't matter how dark he was. People made assumptions and said shitty things, but he could deal with that. It was better than everybody asking what college he'd gotten an athletic scholarship to. He didn't stop being Black when he was hacking or any of that bullshit, but there were fewer places closed to him. Nobody crossed to the other side of the proverbial street at the sight of his skin or clutched their purse or squared their shoulders at the sight of him, because no one could see him. His name inspired fear, yeah, but he'd earned that, and he was damn proud of it. 

He did most of his work outside the house. He didn't want any kind of heat falling on Nana. She'd done her best to raise him right. It wasn't her fault that the dubiously legal or just plain illegal things he could do with computers paid better than any legit job he'd ever had. He liked to think of himself as a vigilante instead of a criminal. At least the crime was white-collar. And maybe he could never go to Iceland, but Nana's debts were paid. He was too good to get caught, too good to stop. He knocked on invisible doors and they opened for him, one after the other, and he walked through them, until the day he opened a door and found Nate Ford behind it, and then the whole world unfolded at his feet.

He put on a mask and became a superhero.

v. Parker was different. She wasn't like anyone Alec had ever known. He wasn't exactly sure how she was wired, not even now that they'd been dating a while, but he was more than willing to spend years figuring her out. Parker was enough for him. She was. She was a handful — a double handful — and she was all he needed. He loved her like he'd never loved anybody. Sure, he'd had a handful of girlfriends before, and a couple of guys he'd spent some time with, but he'd never felt like this about anyone. Parker was the person he liked the best. He loved her twisty little mind and her limber body. He loved the way she trusted herself. He loved her fearlessness and her moments of doubt. 

Except that there was Eliot, looking like every guy Hardison had mentally prepared to have to fight in a bar, and acting like God himself had assigned him to be their sworn protector. Eliot, who got up in Alec's personal space. Eliot, whose voice was a growl Alec felt in his bones. 

Eliot, who had blood on his hands but sang like some kind of country angel. Eliot, who he'd dreamed about kissing more than once. 

Alec tried to ignore the little shivers he felt sometimes when Eliot got close. Parker had just sort of started to figure out what it meant to be in a relationship, that there was more to it than shoving him over the edge of a bunch of buildings. He wasn't going to confuse the matter. Hell, he didn't even know what he wanted. Parker, yes, but Eliot too, and he'd never considered that kind of thing before. He did a couple of casual internet searches, but some of his terms turned up mostly porn, and the useful information, when he glanced at it, kind of felt like he was betraying Parker. He didn't want her to think she wasn't enough. That wasn't it, not exactly. But they were better with Eliot around, even if there wasn't any romance to it. They were more balanced, more capable. 

"Why aren't you dating Eliot?" Parker asked one day, because Parker didn't believe in hesitation. If she couldn't find a high place to throw herself off of, she'd build one. 

"Uh, because I'm dating you," he told her. "The position is filled."

She cocked her head to the side. "I think I remember more than just one position." She winked. He grinned at her. 

"I hope you remember them," he told her. "Otherwise, I haven't done my job right." 

"You didn't really answer my question," she said. 

"I told you, I'm dating you," he said. "That's how most relationships work. Two people like each other. They make some kind of agreement. That's dating."

She pursed her lips. "Why two? Why not three? Why not more, if that's what people want? I've seen it happen before, for other people."

"Most people don't want that," Alec said. 

"We aren't most people." She shrugged. "And I think you like him."

"Of course I like him," Alec said. "Eliot is our best friend. I like him a lot."

"You _like_ him," Parker insisted. "You have feelings about him, like, _feelings_."

"Why would you think that?" Alec asked her. 

"I mean, first of all, the way you look at him sometimes," Parker said. "But also because when I said we should date him, you didn't say you didn't like him that way."

"Maybe I just figured that part was obvious," Alec mumbled. Parker sat next to him and bumped her shoulder against his.

"It's okay," she told him. 

"You're not mad?" he asked. "That I've been, uh, looking at Eliot?"

"Why would I be mad?" she asked. "I'm not in control of your feelings." 

He shook his head slowly. "Sometimes I think I'm not in control of my feelings."

"Yeah," she said. "I understand that. Anyway, I think I like him too. Or at least, I could like him." 

"Eliot?" he said in surprise.

"Yeah," Parker said. "It's weird. I didn't expect it. I just feel like he belongs to us. It didn't used to bother me to see him with other women and now it does a little bit. Like he shouldn't be with them. He's ours." 

"Yeah, but do you think he likes us?" Alec asked her. "I can't read that dude at all sometimes."

"I mean, we could ask him," Parker said. 

"It's a weird day when you're the sensible one," he teased her. 

"He likes us," Parker said with confidence. "He spends basically all his time with us. Even when we're not working. He brought us baklava after his vacation and he never travels with anything." 

"Maybe," Alec said, "but all I know is he dates a lot of pretty women. I mean, I'm pretty sure he'd date you, but I don't know about me. Sometimes what's cool for other people isn't cool for you, you know? It could really fuck up our team if I make him an offer like that and it isn't his thing, and there's no way I'd fuck up our team. We're perfect." 

"I see him looking at you too." Parker bumped him again with her shoulder. 

"What if he doesn't..." Alec started to say, and then paused. "What if he isn't cool with the fact that he likes us?"

"Why wouldn't he be?" Parker asked.

"What if he isn't cool with the fact that he likes me?" Alec asked, and then made a face when Parker looked puzzled. "You know, me."

"Because you're a guy?" Parker said, sounding like she was guessing.

"Yeah," Alec said. "And other stuff. The place he's from, the life he's lead...sometimes guys like Eliot aren't okay with it. Or guys like anyone, I guess. I don't think he has any kind of problems with me, but sometimes people surprise you."

"But it's you," she said. "You're our heart."

"Aww, baby," he said, and put his arm around her. "That's sweet." 

"It's true," she said. "Eliot and I, we're not always like other people. But you show us how to be."

"I don't know if I deserve all this credit," he said. 

"You do," she insisted. "We need you."

"Yeah, but maybe he doesn't need me — us — romantically," Alec said, tapping his fingers. 

Parker shrugged. "We won't know if we don't try." 

"It's just that what we have now is perfect," he said.

"It's almost perfect," she corrected. "We could have an Eliot."

"What, I'm not enough for you?" he teased.

"I don't know," she said. "You're all I've ever had."

"Ah, Parker," he said, and put his arms around her. She nestled against his chest. 

"Should we talk to him?" she asked.

Alec sighed. "Probably."

"Tonight?" she asked.

He laughed. "Baby, no. Give me some time to adjust to this strange new world I'm living in." 

She huffed. "Fine. But I don't think Portland's that weird."

"I meant all of this," he said, leaning back and gesturing between them. 

"I mean, it took four years because of me," Parker said. "I don't want it to be four years from now before we can date Eliot. You're both way better at relationship stuff." 

"Not that long," he said, rolling his eyes. "I'm way more flexible than that."

"You can have a week," she said. "And then I'm asking him."

"That's my girl," he sighed. "Throwing caution to the wind."

vi. Eliot was different, after he went home. Or back, Alec guessed, since Eliot had walked into their apartment fresh off the plane back from Oklahoma, gotten real drunk, and mumbled a bunch of stuff about how he didn't have a home, or a family, and Alec and Parker had had to rub his back and make him drink water and reassure him that yes, he had a family, he was home. They finally coaxed him to sleep on their couch, clutching an old stuffed bunny that Parker had produced from somewhere. 

Alec didn't say anything that night. Eliot was too raw, too desperate. Too vulnerable. Too drunk. It wouldn't have been fair. If anything ever was going to happen, Alec didn't want it to start like that. But a couple of days later, Eliot was still giving him the edgy eye, and Alec was getting a little tired of it.

"What, man?" he asked, and Eliot startled. 

"What what?" Eliot asked.

"You just keep looking at me," Alec said. "It's kinda freaking me out."

"Oh," Eliot said. He looked at his hands. "Huh."

"Sounds about right," Alec said, going back to his screens. 

"Just...what you said the other night," Eliot said. "About my home being here with you and Parker. Did you mean that?" He squinted up at Alec. 

"Yeah, man," Alec said. "It's been true for a while. You could have lived here if you'd wanted. We've got space." 

"Yeah," Eliot said. "Huh."

"I don't know what all this 'huh' means," Alec said. 

"Just thinkin'," Eliot said, his accent heavier than normal, a sure sign he was actually thinking pretty hard. 

"You think and I'll work for a while," Alec said. "How about that?"

"Yeah," Eliot said absently, and was quiet for an hour or so while Alec mapped out a new system, marking its weak points in his mind. It would take a little work and he might have to code a couple of new tools to automate some of it, but yeah, he could make it happen. He sat back and stretched, glancing over at Eliot. Eliot was looking at him again, with some kind of expression on his face Alec couldn't read. And all of a sudden, Alec was done.

"Hey, man," he said. "I don't know if this is the right moment for you to hear this, or if there is any right moment for you to hear this, but Parker and I, we love you. We've been talking about it lately. Your home is with us, whatever you want that to mean, for as long as you want it to be. I know that's probably kind of weird for you to hear right now, or maybe ever, but that's the way it is. We love you. More than just as our friend. Do with that what you will." 

Parker was right. There was a thrill and a freedom in flinging yourself off the edge. 

"Y'all love me," Eliot said slowly.

"We do," Alec said, a thrill of fear-sick excitement in his stomach. "Kind of a hell of a lot, as it turns out. I know, I know, it took us by surprise too."

"And here I was all this time thinking it was just me," Eliot said. 

"I'm sorry, what?" Alec said. The knot in his stomach dissipated into energy. His fingers tingled and his ears were ringing silently somehow.

"I'm not gonna," Eliot started, and stopped, and looked at his hands again. "I didn't want to get in the way." 

"You can't get in the way," Alec told him. "We want you here. Parker says you belong with us."

"I belong with you," Eliot said to himself. 

"Yeah," Alec said. He waved his hand. "I know it's probably weird as hell and maybe you're not into guys or whatever, but that's how it is." 

"No," Eliot said. "It's not...it's not that weird. And I, uh...it wouldn't be the first time. For me. With a guy." 

"Okay then," Alec said. "Just, um, think about it, I guess. Let us know."

Eliot nodded. "I will." 

"Didn't really see that as part of my happy ever after," Alec said. "But then again, I didn't really see any of this, or any kind of happy ever after at all, at least not before Nana found me." 

"I know how that feels," Eliot said. "Maybe we just need to write our own ending. Never been much of a writer myself."

"I only write code," Alec said. "But I bet we can figure something out. We've worked our way through tougher situations."

"With worse payoffs," Eliot said, his eyes crinkling at the edges. 

"Love seems like a pretty good one," Alec agreed. "If we can manage it."

"I have a hunch we'll figure it out," Eliot said. "Kinda seems like there's not much we can't do together." 

"Seems that way," Alec agreed. He smiled at Eliot. "You think. I'll work. When Parker comes back from wherever she went, we'll talk, unless she hit up the chocolate store again, in which case, we'll wait for six hours for her to stop bouncing off the walls, and then maybe we'll talk." 

"Yeah," Eliot said, relaxing back into the couch cushions. 

"All right," Alec said to himself. "Cool. Groovy. Not gonna go with groovy, actually." He went back to rewriting the world according to his rules, bending the universe to his will, and it felt like flying.


End file.
